


Hidden Valkyrie: Episode 1

by Celticas



Series: Hidden Valkyrie [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 01, F/M, Genius Skye, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2018-10-12 23:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 16,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10501350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celticas/pseuds/Celticas
Summary: Skye was picked up from her van at 18. Naive and looking to help the world, James "Bucky" Barnes and his best friend Violet "Bender" Shaw offer her a way to do that.Until Violet is taken during the Battle of New York and Skye and Bucky set out to find her.Skye goes undercover with a covert SHIELD Team, but what else is she hiding from her new team. In the years they thought she was hacking from her van, what was she really up to? And how much does she really know about the rot that is eating SHIELD from the inside out.





	1. The Battle Where Everything Went Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Hi All,  
> This is the first fic I have written in a very very long time. Thus I am looking for a Beta if anyone is interested.  
> Also I am at university so there isn't a set timeline for updates. But I do know where I want to take this universe though until Age of Ultron.

**New York City:**

The city was falling into chaos. Manhattan had been overrun by honest to god Aliens! The group that history would remember were fighting to stop the invasion, but they had little time to worry about the innocent civilians that were being crushed between the titans. So a second, quiet group stepped in.

"QUAKE! There are a group of civilians cornered a block east of you." A soft voice spoke into the ear of a small Asian woman. After a quick affirmative, she held her hands down either side of herself, unleashed the quakes that she was named for, and launching herself in the direction she had been given. Propelled past one of her team mates she called out, "Hey Frosty, you got more incoming."

The black clad man she called out to flipped her off before turning to engage the squad of aliens coming up behind him. After taking out the enemy soldiers Barnes spoke into his own comm, "These fuckers replicate faster than Catholic rabbits, popping up out of fucking nowhere."

A reluctant laugh huffed cross the airwaves from one of the team's leader, "Soldier, keep your commentary to yourself please. Some of us are actually trying to work."

Barnes took a second to look around for his next target, spotting his co-captain one block down, "Aw, Bender you love it."

Violet AKA Bender chuckled. "No I really don't. If you’re looking for something to do, go help Quake."

Violet herself had no more time for banter, the front wall of a high-rise had just been rammed by one of the flying aliens and was about to block the exit of a group of suit clad business men. She shot both hands out towards the falling debris, the second her gesture ended the debris caught in mid-air. A lazy flick of her hands re-directed it towards a clear section of street that was out of the way of the evacuating populace.

Another team member stepped in to hustle the terrified businessmen into the subway. At the closest entrance, she stopped one of them with a pale dirt covered hand, "Get everyone onto the tracks and start walking." Pulling away, she flicked her dark hair over a shoulder before racing back into the fray. "Freya, what have we got?"

The voice that directed Quake to the cornered civilians began, " I believe Power Man may require …"

"I'm fine." A gruff voice cut in, "Jewel, head to Devil." Jewel, the one that managed the businessmen, nodded and made her way to the red clad fighter that she could she trying to shepherd a group into a bank that was untouched. Together they were able to get the group undercover before parting ways and heading in opposite directions to cover more ground.

As the battle raged on across one end of Manhattan the two groups continued working to stop the incursion and move people to safety.

Bender pulled her blades as a squad of alien fighters bore down on the group she was moving. With a twist of her wrist she stopped the downward swing of one other weapons as the leader tried to get a clear shot at her. Holding the first alien off, she flicked out her other blade and slit the throat of the second soldier. Using the momentum from the cut she twisted out from under the weapon of the first soldier, brought both blades around and skewered the third as he tried to approach from her left. Pulling back with a vicious yell she freed her blades and turned to face the first soldier, who had now leveled his weapon and began firing off shots. Bender lent back and the shots missed by scant centimeters, she sheathed one blade and flicked her hand towards the soldier trying to take her life. He was suddenly airborne and flying away from her. As he made contact with the building on the other side of the street with a sickening crack a straight figure in blue caught her eye.

Bender turned towards the bright flash of colour, she had been aware that others had been fighting, allowing her group to defend the civilian population but until this moment the only one she had caught sight of was the Black Widow as she sped past on the back of one of the flying alien craft. The uniform and shield being held by the figure caused her mouth to drop and an inarticulate cry of pain and rage to burst from her chest.

The Captain was half turned away from her, with a twist reminiscent of the Ancient Greek discus throwers his back was to her and he launched his shield at the alien that had landed on a car behind him. But not before the alien had managed to fire his weapon. The shot sailed over the Captain's shoulder and his enhanced hearing registered the wet sound of its impact with the chest of the woman behind him.

The Winter Soldier looked up as he hears his best friends cry of rage and pain echo down the broad streets of Manhattan. He registered her standing with her back to him three blocks closer to the epicenter of the chaos the city had become. Past her he saw a ghost. Captain Steven Rogers, his brother in everything but blood. Time slowed down as the Chitauri landed behind the Captain and shot the soldier's best friend. He watched as she crumpled. His mind was registering anything, he was as frozen as his name.

The Captain turned towards the woman who had just been hit, the flash of blonde reminded of someone he shouldn't be thinking about in the middle of a battlefield.

The two men, once and forever brothers watched as Bender hit the ground. They watched frozen as battle raged. Five, ten, fifteen seconds dragged by in an infinity and in a second. It was only the arrival of a black clad shield STRIKE team that caused time to right itself for the two soldiers. One was reassured, Shield would look after the injured woman. The other instantly began sprinting towards his best friend, he knew the rot that was at the heart of SHIELD, they would not get their hands on her if he had anything to say about it. Time slowed down again for the Winter Soldier, one part of his brain watched as the Captain turned around to re-engage the enemy, another calculated the distance between the three people and came to the conclusion that he would never make it in time. The Captain could have but he had no reason to distrust the organisation that had hurt so many, and over the noise of the battle there was no way that the Captain would hear the Soldier call out, not even with his enhanced senses.

The Winter Soldier raced towards Bender, even as he watched the team snap metal cuffs around her wrists. He watched as ropes dropped down from the sky, leading back up to a Quinjet, hovering over the battlefield. He watched as they threaded the rope though the cuffs, secured them and began winching the injured woman off the ground. They didn’t care if they hurt her further. He screamed as he reached the spot she had fallen just as her body left his reach. The assassin fell to his knees as his best friend was pulled into the Quinjet and as its cloaking was activated he roared his agony.

The team of defenders ground to a halt as the Soldier's road echoed across the battlefield. None of them had ever heard him make that noise before.

"Team, SHIELD has Bender." Freya's voice echoed unheard across the comms.

**Safe House, New York City, 3 Hours After the Battle of New York:**

The team sat on various surfaces in a rundown building in a poor area of Queens. For people who had all seen their world crumble more than once before the clusterfuck that had been the last few hours, none of their minds could quite grasp that their friend, their leader, their Sister was gone. None of them believed in their hearts of hearts that they would be able to get her back, but they all knew without a doubt that they would rip SHIELD apart trying. If stepping out of the shadows that had for so long sheltered them was what it took, they would all take that step.

Skye A.K.A. "Quake" was curled up beside her husband, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes who fought under the name Winter Soldier, on a dirty brown two seater couch. Across from them Jessica "Jewel" Jones sat on the floor, her back against Luke "Power Man" Cage with a half-drunk bottle of rum in her hand. Above her, Luke sat with his head in one massive hand. He knew if he looked at any of them he would start crying and once the shock wore off and a bit of time had passed none of them would let him live it down if he was the first to start bawling, once someone else broke it would be ok.

On the only other reasonably comfortable chair in the whole apartment, the red clad "Dare Devil", Matt Murdock to the general public, appeared to be staring off into space. In reality the blind lawyer was documenting ever sensory input he had experienced in the 10 minutes before and after his friend was taken. If there had been any trace that his enhanced senses had taken in, he would find it and follow it to the end of the earth. Unfortunately, nothing had jumped out to him so far.

**Small Farm House, outside Peoria Illinois, 3 Months After the Battle of New York:**

"THERE IS NOTHING HERE!!" The sound burst out into the otherwise silent room. Skye threw the keyboard across the room.

James looked up from the files he had been going through. After the initial shock, had worn off, the team had begun their hunt. It had been three exhausting, infuriating months since they lost Bender to the corruption within SHIELD. They had approached every source they had, both legal and illegal. No one had heard a word about the movement of a woman out of New York. The others had had to return to their public lives, leaving Skye and James to continue following every lead, no matter how cold or flimsy. They had not found a single verifiable fact about Bender's location or status.

"What can I do?" James came up behind his wife and began kneading the tension from her shoulders. She had been hunched over her computers for the last eight hours. Hacking to the highest levels of SHIELD, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, MI6, Mossad, every agency they could think of that may have something on their friend.

Skye dropped her head into her hands. "I don't know… Without being inside one of these organisations, there is nothing else I can do." She took a deep breath and brought her dark brown eyes up to meet his baby blues.

"Then that is what we will do. Reach out to your old Rising Tide contacts. Restart that life, and get noticed. One of them will pick you up eventually doll. Leave some crumbs and they will scramble to pick you up."


	2. Episode 1 Part 1

**Los Angeles, 5 months after the Battle of New York:**

Since the plan had first been proposed, it had taken another two months for Skye to re-insert herself into the life she would have had if James and Violet hadn't picked her up. They had set up means of untraceable communication so that there would be a free flow of information between the two of them. A link to Freya had been encoded into a dermal-implant that was put behind the shell of Skye's left ear. A touch to the area or certain code words would awaken the AI and link James into the audio around her while also starting a triangulation of her location.

Skye had developed the implant off a less powerful and bulkier model first designed by Cybertek, a shady tech company that the team had been trying to get more intel on. The design had only just been finalised, but the hope was that eventually each of the members of the Valkyries would have one.

Now on a hot summer afternoon she was following a man in the bright L.A. sun. Her electronic stalking had suggested that one Mr. Michael Peterson, single father to nine year old Ace Peterson, had become embroiled in the latest efforts to recreate the Super Soldier serum.

Skye and Bucky knew enough about the original source of Captain America's serum, hidden in the biology of Bender, that any attempt to recreate it would result in either spectacular failure, see the Hulk, or a watered down version, see the Red Room experiments. And that was one of the things that worried them most about Bender being in the hands of SHIELD, that their scientists would figure out what everybody else had missed and be able to create whole armies of juiced jack booted thugs.

She took a seat in the a hipster café across the road from the three story walk up that the lab was hidden in. Pulling out her phone and thumbing to the GPS tracker she had placed on Peterson, Skye watched as the little red dot made its way down the street towards her. A quick glance in his direction showed the man she was waiting on. What she hadn’t counted on for this first interaction was that he had his son with him.   _Ah well, no plan survives first contact with whatever that German guy said…_  She thinks to her self. She would watch and wait until either an opportunity presented itself or she could make one.

Out of the corner of one eye Skye watched as Michael "Mike" Peterson stopped at a hot dog stall across the road from the undercover lab. She watched as he bought his son a hot dog and stood talking to the stall owner. No doubt a friend he was going to ask to watch Ace while he ducked into the building she had been watching all morning. But as with her luck lately, things continued to Not Go To Plan as the lab exploded in a shower of fire and debris. 

_This is what I have been waiting for,_  Skye thought as she pulled out her phone. Across the street Mike pushed his son at the hot dog man and raced across the street as a woman's screams echoed across the frozen intersection. Skye lost sight of him as he raced into a back alley, but spotted him only seconds later sticking his head out of a window on the fourth floor of the burning building. She watched, and pointed her phone, as he disappeared again before climbing out with a slightly singed red-head in his arms. The crowd around her stilled. With a final deep breath, Mike jumped. Crushing the road where he landed, he took a second to gather his wits, before lowering the woman's feet to the ground and steadying her as she got her bearings.

Skye glanced down at her phone, saved the file, and melted into the cheering crowd.

 

**Café:**

Once again Skye found Mike sitting in his local diner. She had observed him here a number of times in the past, drinking bad coffee and going through help wanted ads. Making sure no one was looking at either of them she slipped into the booth opposite the not even slightly singed man. And she just waited. Minutes dragged by before the older man looked up and scowled at her.

"Who are you?" The words growled out.

“Act cool. Pretend we’re talking.” Skye cast an eye around to see if anyone noticed her sit down.

“We are talking. And you didn’t answer my question.” Mike was so done with this day. He just wanted to find a job and get on with life.

“Right, sorry, Skye.” A smile thrown in for good measure.

“Uh hu.” The two sounds were loaded with about as much scepticism as two sounds could be.

“Look, I now who you are Mike. The Hood Guy. That’s you.”

“Lady, I don’t know what your talking about.”

“That shit, they have been injecting you with? Its not stable. No matter what they have told you. That video is everywhere and bad men in crappy black suits are going to be looking for you very soon if their not already.”

“You don’t know what your talking about.” He hissed at her. How the fuck did she know so much about it?

“Yes I do. I have been following centipede for a while. They can’t fix you, but I know someone who can. But I need your help first. Just keep your shit together for 24 hours, and my friend will help you and we can find you work. Something safe and away from the MIB knock offs.” Skye looked him in the eye. Hoping he believed her. Mike was the best In for SHIELD she had found in months.

“24 hours?”

“Yup, that’s it. Hang around, they will come after me, looking to get at you, when I post a video from earlier today.” Skye started outlining the plan. “As things happen and I need something from you my friend Freya will contact you. After that she will send you the details of my friend.”

“Who’s the friend?” Mike wanted a few more details then, _My name is Skye and I can help._

“She was a Professor at Culver. Betty Ross. She joined up with my people after her father tried to put her in jail.”

“No offence, you have some shitty friends. Why should I trust someone that should be in jail?” This was sounding more and more insane to Mike the longer he sat there.

“I never said she should be in jail, I just said that her dad tried to put her in jail. It’s a super fucked up situation, but this is your best bet of not going kabloom like the dude from this morning.”

“Fine.”

 

**6 Hours Later:**

 Skye sat in the back of her van with an array of screen spread out in front of her. One held a loop of the news feed talking about Mike's appearance. Another displayed the recording and upload program for her next Rising Tide release. Two more were currently linked into CCTV and ATM camera's covering all of the approaches to her hiding place. She had argued against those two with Bucky, a normal 20 something hacker wouldn't have taken quiet that level of precaution but he had almost begged her so she had relented. 

As the time for her next broadcast approached she cued up the footage and, taking a deep breath, began the narration;

"The Secret is OUT. For decades, your organisation stayed in the shadows, hiding the truth. But now we know you are among us. Heroes, Monsters, Gods, Aliens. The world is full of wonders."

A light flashed green as the video went live and a ticker began counting up, the video already spreading. Skye watched as the number picked up speed. The number in the thousands when movement on the Bank of America ATM to her south pulling her eye from the center screen, to the far left. Two black clad SHIELD thugs were approaching. One with a gun drawn, the other with what looked like a taser. 

Logging out of a number of programs, including the surveillance. A few more key strokes secured her systems, just as the side door of her vehicle was wrenched open and she was black-bagged. 

 

**Interrogation, "The Bus":**

"Skye?" The older, and presumably the 'nice cop', asked in a gentle tone.

"Yes?" One word questions? She can play this game all day.

"NO! What's your actual name? We have your screen-names, so you may as well tell us. Save us the trouble of finding it ourselves!" The younger 'bad cop' growled at her.

Skye slowly drew a disapproving eye up the man's body. She knew who he was. Agent Grant Ward, supposedly of S.H.I.E.L.D. loyalty. In reality he was only loyal to himself and his training officer, John Garret. That in combination with who the training officer was in league with made her 1000% less likely to answer his questions. Better to ignore him.

Phil Coulson was an Army Veteran and had twenty years at S.H.I.E.L.D. under his belt and within two minutes he knew that the young girl handcuffed to his table wasn't going to tell them anything other than exactly what she wanted them to hear. Ward's growling and intimidation tactics hadn't even made her blink. In fact it appeared that after a quick appraisal she had decided that he wasn't anyone to be concerned with. He wasn't convinced she was wrong. There was something about her. Some 'otherness'. A thrumming of confidence that he had only come across a few select times.

With this in mind, Phil took control of the interrogation back. A father figure might work better on the girl.

"Skye," Phil took control of the conservation back. "We are going through your electronic footprint right now. We will find what we are looking for. It will go better for you and your associate if you just tell us who he is."

She flicked a piece of hair over her shoulder, the picture of millennial blasé. In reality she was opening to her link to Freya.

"Your going through all of my files?" Skye posed the question to the men in front of her, but it was the AI's response she was looking for.

_"They have not breached your level 1 security encryption."_

She smiled at the men in front of her. "That's not going to go well for you."

At this Ward lost the little control he had on his anger, slamming his hands down on the table and getting in her face he growled at her, "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Skye's smile transformed into a smirk and slowly winked at the much larger man.

The almost non-answer was as interesting to Phil as an actual answer would have been, as was her lack of response to Ward's overreaction. She wasn't concerned in the slightest about them having free reign to try and access her system, and she had obviously spent a significant amount of time with at least one person with anger management issues.

As the staring contest between the two younger inhabitants of the room continued, the comm in Phil's ear crackled into life.

_"Sir, I think you should come down here_." Fitz spoke over the electronic device.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I realised there was a scene missing in the middle.   
> Originally this was supposed to be the whole first episode but I felt bad about not posting in forever. Oh well, that's life and uni eats all of my time.  
> Let me know what you think.


	3. Episode 1 Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait and the not long chapter. University has been crazy and I am taking a creative writing unit so most of my work has been on my original writing. Some of which I am going to post after it has been marked if you are interested.

**Science and Technology Lab, Command 606:**

Leopold Fitz sat back in his ergonomic office chair and stared at the code scrolling across his computer screen. It was like nothing he had seen before. Almost, otherworldly... At this point he didn't think he would be able to even figure out what coding language Skye was encrypting her hardware with, let alone crack it. He toggled on his comm link with the boss he had only met face-to-face a few hours ago. "Sir, I think you should come down here."

A response crackled over the comms, " _Roger."_

Fitz made a mental note to clean up the communication frequency when he had a moment.

Two minutes later, the enigmatic, previously dead, Agent Phil Coulson strode up behind the baffled engineer.

"Talk to me Fitz." The Boss sounded unsure if he had the right name, it was a tone both scientists had heard many times.

"I won't be able to crack this Sir." The engineer pushed back and looked up.

"Explain." Phil needed something he could use to either break or connect with the young woman sitting above them.

"I wouldn't even know where to start cracking this. All coding languages grew out of the same source, so they all have patterns that are recognisable even if the viewer doesn't know that particular language. But this..." he waved a hand a the screen and then went back to twisting his fingers around each other,"... This is like nothing I have ever seen."

The older agent looked down at the younger man, Phil knew Fitz, or was it Simmons, was a brilliant engineer but maybe he wasn't as across programing as his file suggested. "Maybe its just not a language you know."

"All due respect sir, I don't think you understand. Think about it like this; by and large all European languages grew out of Latin and Ancient Greek, so say you speak only English, you would still recognise French or German or Italian as European languages and you might be able to pick bits and pieces out of a segment of text because they have the same root. All programing languages are like that. But I can't pick out anything I recognise. It's more like I speak English and trying to read Martian. " Fitz's explanation got both more excited and more frustrated as he rambled. Glaring at the stream of letters and numbers by the end of it.

"Fine, send it to the encryption unit and keep working on it." Phil turned on his heel and left. It may not have told him anything about what was on Skye's computers but it had given him an idea about how to approach the young woman.

 

**Interrogation Room, Command 606:**

Walking back into the bland grey room, Phil was not surprised to find Ward still staring at Skye, it did surprise him that Skye had graduated from smirking to glaring hatefully. He made a mental note to check the surveillance cameras. With his re-entry, Skye broke off glaring at Ward to shoot him a happy smile.

"Our engineer is having an interesting time looking through your computers Skye." Half-truths were Phil's bread and butter.

"It's going to get much more interesting if he keeps looking." Again, she didn't seem concerned that they were going through her things. It interested Phil that she had an idea of what they would find and seemed to know how far they had gotten, suggesting that her weird programming was the least of it. Maybe he could get something from that.

"How so? What we have found so far is plenty interesting."

"What you have found so far is nothing. If you had actually found something worth talking about you would have said."

From where Phil was standing against the wall he couldn't see Ward's face, but as Skye was once again shooting smirks his way, he would guess it wasn't pretty.

"What should we be talking about then?" Ward pushed the words out past gritted teeth.

Skye sighed. It was time to start playing ball. The whole purpose of this was to join the team and she had had her fun annoying the suit.

"Centipede."

"What is centipede?" Phil was surprised that she had given them anything, even if it was not much. It had been shaping up to being one of the most redundant interrogations he had ever done. She wasn't given anything that she didn't want to away. It almost reminded him of someone else, but he couldn't think of who.

"Oh no, you don't know what that is?" Freya was dug far enough into SHIELD's systems that Skye already knew that the black ops project wasn't even on their radar but she had to play to young outspoken hacktivist who would be crowing at beating them. "Billions of dollars worth of equipment and personnel and I beat you with a laptop I won in a bet?" She scoffed, silently apologising to Freya for excluding her. "They are who you should be looking into, not me. Their lab is in the building that blew up yesterday."

Finally, that was something to go on.

"Thank you Skye. Ward with me." Phil waved the other man out of the room before him.

"Hey what about me?" Skye shouted after them.

"You can sit and try to think of anything else that can help." Phil shut the door before she could answer.


	4. Episode 1 Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all,  
> This was meant to be a little longer than it ended up, but it seemed a good place to stop. Most of this is pretty similar to what happened in the show with only a few changes in dialogue, but the internal thoughts are were you see the difference. A lot of the changes I have planned will be from the end of this episode on.  
> Things are calming down a little bit in life so hopefully I will be able to post more frequently. Although probably not with any sort of pattern or logic to it.  
> Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think.

**Centipede Lab, L.A.:**

Simmons, Fitz and May made their way into the decimated office. Carefully, picking the most stable route through the debris. The three came to a stop in the middle of a room, pausing for a second to just take in the destruction before splitting up. Simmons had spotted something just off where they had stopped, while May made her way back across the room to the door.

"Was this leased as a Lab?" Simmons asked as she stepped over a downed ceiling beam.

"Self Empowerment Centre." May responded, shining her torch at the equipment that had once made up an extremely expensive custom alarm panel. "With a top of the line motion detection security system." She looked over at the younger woman, who had kneelt next to what looked suspiciously like a deep fried human hand.

"Ah, so a secret lab." Simmons pulled out a set of collection tweezers and pried of a piece of charred flesh from the body half buried by the rubble. Examining it for a second before dropping it in a container, labeling it and looking began poking at the body again.

"And a superhero, not a coincidence. Was it sabotage? Or meant for him? And how the hell did that hacker know?" The whole situation spelt trouble to May and she did not appreciate it.

After having a quick snoop through the room, Fitz re-joined the women.

"Yeah, working the problem. Ladies, if you'll just..." He shooed them out of the way so that he could set the large black case he had been lugging around down and open it. Inside seven small drones were held securely in foam.

"Agent Fitz, if you are going to be in the field, you are going to have to get your hands dirty." May chastised.

"No, I don't." Fitz then proceeded to ignore the older woman, pull out his table and active the small machines. With a happy smile and humming Snow White's Off to Work he punched a button on the tablet and the drones started scanning the room.

 

**Interrogation Room, Command 606:**

Ward and Coulson re-entered the interrogation room to find Skye sitting at the table examining her finger nails. Obviously putting on  a display of being Bored!.

"Who would want to blow up that lab? Aside from you that is." Ward snarled. His hostility to the unconcerned Skye was reaching a level that even Coulson was a little concerned, although he didn't allow it to show.

"Maybe they blew themselves up, how the hell should I know? They are chatter on the deep web and then gone. I traced the access point MAC address to that building and went to check it out." Skye finally bit back. It was not going to be easy getting along with this man, even harder keeping her anger in check to stop herself from accidentally vibrating one of his bones apart, _although there was an idea_ she thought _they would never know it was me_. Luckily, or maybe unfortunately, very few things in her life had been.

"Why were you looking into them?" Coulson cut in before Ward got out of hand, throwing a disapproving frown at the younger man. Silently telling him to reign it in.

"Cause shit like that is wrong and needs to be shown to the world." Skye answered a disapproving frown both on her face and in her words.

"What are you really after?" Ward demanded, shoving his way back into the conversation.

"The Truth. What are you after?" She sneered at him.

"World peace." He snarked back. "You pseudo anarchist hacker types love to stir shit up. But you're never around for the fallout. We have to clean up your mess. People keep secrets for a reason."

"Yeah, generally cause what they are doing is wrong and they know it." The certainty in Skye's words were obvious.

Ward took a step back. He hadn't expected her to keep coming back at him as much as she had. "Putting truths out there that the world isn't ready for only gets people hurt." He tried to be slightly more reasonable.

There was a pause as Skye looked down at her hands, for all appearances considering his words. She didn't disagree with him, she knew the power of secrets, but that wasn't who she was meant to be at the moment. Right now she was playing herself as she thought five years ago and that girl would not have agreed.

"Well, just because you're reasonable and .. Firm... Doesn't mean that you're not an evil, faceless government Tool bag." A little flirting to get him off-guard, she let her eyes travel with her words.

A smirk crossed Ward's face, thinking she was giving away more than she thought.

"Just give us your guy's name." Ward crossed his arms, purposefully flexing his biceps, trying to distract her.

"He's not my guy!" Skye allowed her true exasperation with not only this situation but the last six months leak into her voice.

"Skye, do you understand that he is in danger?" Coulson tried to appeal to the caring heart he could see in the young woman.

"Then let me go. Cause the most dangerous thing to him, is you!" Skye could see the soft manipulation that Coulson was going for. It was very well done.

"You want to be alone with him. Of course."  Ward stepped back in. Turning away from Skye, he looked at his boss. "She's a groupie, Sir. All this hacking into SHIELD and tracking powers. She might as well be one of those sweaty cosplay girls crowding around Stark Tower."

"Hey! I would never!" The insult she had taken from Ward's words was clear.

Coulson looked back to her and raised an eyebrow.

"Well, maybe. But not for Stark. I would def be there for Captain America. Have you seen that ass?" Skye had a silent chuckle to herself at the look on Bucky's face is he heard her say that... Actually he had heard her say it before and the look was gold! Almost as good as the look on Coulson's face when she said it, he was partway between outraged, agreement and a sort of dreamy remembrance.

"Oh my god! Have you actually seen that ass up close?" She asked the older agent, real surprise colouring her words. This guy must be high up there if he had been that close to Cap. An immediate red tinge spread cross his skin, although his expression cleared back to bland agent.

Coulson cleared his face and motioned Ward to the door.

"Is it the girl? Why are you allowing her to get under your skin?" Coulson could see how much Skye was baiting the younger man, what he couldn't understand was why Ward was taking biting. He lead his subordinate back into the main section of the plane.

"Sir?" Ward did not play innocent well.

"Or is it the assignment? I know you don't want to be apart of this team, but I didn't thing you were so unprofessional as to deliberately blow an interrogation." The second part said with very obvious disapproval.

"She sees you as an ally sir. Give me a minute alone with her and you'll have your answers." Ward was trying to pull the hostility back in and talk to his boss with respect.

"She's an asset." Coulson reminded the other agent.

"She is such an a-. Wait, asset?" Now he was confused, how was she an asset?

"We don't know anything about her. Do you appreciate how often that happens? Never. That happens never. We need what she knows." Turning away he opens a cupboard door and pulls out a black matte case, slightly bigger than a briefcase. With a flight of both hands he unlocks it and pulls the lid open. He pulls out the gun contained within and loads it with a clear liquid before indicating Ward to return to interrogation.


	5. Episode 1 Part 4

Centipede Lab, L.A.:

Fitz stood in the middle of the decimated room and watched the screen of his tablet as the drones flew and interconnecting search pattern through the space. Scanning laser lights flashing on and off as they found objects of interest. As a drone finished with a section of room, Simmons picker her way through it and collected physical samples for further analysis back in their lab. As she worked as talked at May, "See, we designed each with their own capabilities, so, um some are recording the dimensions and texture of the rooms and then some are testing the matter density, radiation. I mean, one is basically just smelling."

Although the younger woman was obviously talking to her, May was ignoring the mindless chatter. She didn't need to know what the machines were doing as long as they were doing their job.

"Whoa, whoa. I've got something." The excitement of discovery deepened Fitz's brogue.

"Who's got it?" Simmons looked up from the slightly darker piece of rubble that she had been taking a scraping from.

Fitz looked up from his tablet and after a second pointed at a particular drone. "Uh, Bashful."

May left the window she had been looking out at the shout and moved across the room towards where Fitz was pointing. Ducking under the still hovering Bashful. She shifted one scorched piece of metal and picked up another. Flipping it around in her hands a few times she looked at the other two agents. "Surveillance camera. Deep fried."

"Yes, but that model has a flash memory in case of brownouts. Now, I could sync that data from the motion detectors and with a little luck, get some images from before the blast. And by "luck" I mean "underappreciated genius."

The arrogance in the words were cut by the puppy dog expression on his face and the fact that May knew he was as good as he said.

"Yeah, we'll need it." Simmons handed a large sample container to the older agent. "Snow's reading some compounds that are - wow. My god." Simmons broke off in the middle of her sentence leaving May to ask for more information which she hated having to do.

"Explosive?" The frown was obvious in the words.

"Not of this earth." Simmons directed wide, incredulous eyes at the other two.

 

 

Interrogation Room, Command 606:

Skye waited a good ten seconds, ok maybe five seconds, after the men left the room before she spoke. "Freya, you there?"

"I am." To the point as always.

"Can you up date me while I have a sec?" Skye muttered into her collar as she settled back into the uncomfortable metal chair, adopting a look of absolute millennial boredom while dropping her mind into listened to her AI.

"Matt asked for James' help with some trouble with the Russians. Natasha has sent her regards and reports that Barton is doing a bit better. She asks that you be careful and remember your training. Betty is getting set up for Michael when you are ready to send him over." Skye could almost hear Freya ticking off points on a checklist of Skye's close friends. "Myles is getting into something you would class as 'stupid' in Dallas and you might consider looking into it when you are done here. Ross is making noise about Banner, which Betty is not yet aware..."

The door handle rattling caused Skye to cough, cutting off the report. Freya would not be happy with her later but while she could easily deal with Ward concussed and half asleep, Coulson was another matter entirely and she would need to be paying attention to keep her cover. The door opened, readmitting the suited agents.

Coulson took the lead this time while Ward stood and glowered.

"This is QNB-T16. It's the top shelf martini of sodium pentothal derivatives." Coulson slipped a vial of green liquid into a futuristic looking gun. Skye shifted uncomfortable, as she knew they were expecting her too.

"It's a brand new and extremely potent truth drug. Don't worry. The effects only last about an hour." Coulson continued.

In reality Skye was having to fight hard not to laugh at them, sodium pentothal only worked some of the time and her long exposure to the literal goddess of truth meant nothing on earth could force Skye to let anything slip that she didn't mean to. Asgardian magic would always trump human science. But if they had no reason to know that whatever she told them 'under the influence' was false, they might start trusting her faster. She would have to keep her answers as close to the truth she wanted them to know as she could.

"And you'll have a nice little nap. And we'll have all the answers to our - Hey!" Ward took over the intimidation before being cut off with a yelp as Coulson shot the injection into his neck with no warning.

"What the hell?!" The younger man whined, slapping a hand against the injection site.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did that hurt?" Coulson's deadpan was almost better than Natasha's, only the twinkle of mirth in his eyes giving his enjoyment away.

With a shift of his shoulder's Ward lowered his hand and tried to regain his bravado. "No. But you've lost your mind. You should never do that to a member of your team. And yes, it did hurt a little bit. But I always try to mask my pain in front of beautiful women."

Skye couldn't tell if the second part of Ward's babble was legitimate or a fake-out but she did allow her amusement at the entire situation show. She was going to enjoy working with Coulson and she could only hope the rest of his team was as much fun.

"Because I think it makes me seem more masculine. Mu God! This stuff works fast!" He continued, at which Skye out right laughed.

"Don't trust us? Ask him whatever you'd like." With that Coulson left the room.

If Skye was 100% sure they were recording every thing in this room she would almost be tempted to ask if Ward knew anything about Violet, it would be amazing to have her family back together again. But she knew that they were recording and Freya wouldn't be able to wipe the feeds in time to stop Coulson seeing them, she also wasn't positive whether this was a ploy. Instead she would play the game.

"You seem nervous Agent Ward." She knew the line about him finding her beautiful was true, his eyes had been more than a little admiring a few times through their conversation and she would use that to her advantage. She shifted into a more upright position and pushed her chest out just a little more than was natural for her posture.

"I'm calling to mind my training." He closed his eyes and tried to ignore her.

Skye stood up and made her way behind him, just close enough that her pinky brushed against his arm. She had learnt sexual manipulation at the feet of the Black Widow, this was nothing.

"There's no way I'm going to reveal classified secrets to a girl who's hell bent on taking us down." Ward was visible struggling to keep his cool as she stood close enough that he could smell her slightly fruity perfume.

"Have you ever killed anyone?" She leant across his shoulder to almost whisper the words to him. Her hair shifting against his neck.

"Yes, a few." He scrunched his eyes up further, annoyed at himself. "High risk targets." He ground out. "But they were terrible people who were trying to murder nice people."

"Have you ever killed anyone that wasn't a bad person." She may want on the team but if he was being influenced by the QNB whatever, she could sew a few doubts about the crooked agent and hopefully make others think twice about trusting him. And if he wasn't under the influence then no harm done.

"Yes." The words were ground out.

So he was under the influence. Interesting play Coulson. She would have to be careful not to push it too far.

"And what does your family think about that?" She shifted in his peripheral vision again, allowing her collar to dip enough to give him a glimpse of the tan lace underneath. Her words ghosting across his ear, making him shiver. Both from trying to hold the answer in and from arousal.

"Who cares?" The words were bleeding with anger.

Skye took a step back and grinned. She had found her first weak point.


	6. Episode 1 Part 5

Skye stared at the slowly drooping Ward. He was coming down off the truth serum and the change in brain chemistry was obviously going to drop him right into a good long nap any second now. She hoped it also left him with a wicked hang-over, she would take whatever perverse pleasure she could. She continued to sit and watch the agent as he slumped onto the table and then a few more minutes waiting to see if Coulson was coming back for her. Taking the time to examine the dull metal room they had dropped her into. It was interesting in a bland Men in Black kind of way she supposed. Three minutes later when the door still hadn't cracked open and Ward was snoring into a small puddle of his own drool Skye was done with waiting. A test a of the door handle showed it was unlocked and she slipped through before anyone could think about stopping her. Wandering into the body of what was definitely a large aircraft she spotted Coulson in a half-glassed in room and took her time making her way between the plush looking seats. She could see that the room Coulson was in had multiple screen across several surfaces. One of them showed the drooling specialist in the interrogation room, another showed a scrolling feed of various news outlets and social media posts, the last one that the older agent was splitting his attention between has a moving, shaky image of a burnt out room. The inside of the lab that had exploded Skye decided.

"Did Agent Ward give you anything?" The question was asked without the man turning to look at her and the tone was so lacking in inflection that she wasn't sure what exactly Ward had been meant to give her.

"He told me he's been to Paris, but never really seen it and that he wishes you had stayed in Tahiti." She might not know what Coulson was expecting her to get from that dog-and-pony show but she could test the waters a bit to see if he trusted Ward. 

"It's a magical place." He drawled the words, no heat behind them.

"Ward doesn't like your style." Skye enjoyed poking sleeping dragons.

That finally caused Coulson to turn around and look at her. For a long five seconds they levelled calculating looks at each other. The ex-army agent ram-rod straight and the hacktivist lazily leaning against the doorjamb.

"I'm more interested in your style, than what he thinks of mine." 

"My style?" Shit, what had he noticed?

"If I didn't know better, I would think you have been trained by some very interesting people." The problem for Coulson was that he wasn't sure that he didn't know better. He knew frustratingly little about the woman across from him. She hadn't flinched with the accusation and that either meant that it was so far off centre he might as well have been firing a throw pillow, or she was so well trained that there wasn't even a flicker in her cover. A third option wavered in his deep consciousness that he was trying to ignore, that what ever they did to him in Tahiti had screwed him up even more than he thought. 

Skye for her part just smiled at him, a touch of millennial 'who me?' in the expression.

"I think I kinda like your style though." The laugh audible in the words, completely ignoring his comment.

"What about this?" Coulson waved a hand over the glass table between them and the news report was pulled up and the audio snaked out of the walls.

"Remains in critical condition. Employees could not identify the attacker, but security footage confirms that this man assaulted the factory foreman before damaging thousands of dollars’ worth of company property." An image of Mike throwing a gas canister played out under the words. 

As the two of them watched the display, three other people trouped into the room.

"This is wrong." Conviction was the overriding emotion in Skye's voice. "This is not... The guy I met, he wouldn't. He just needs a break."

"Then let us give him one. What have you got on him?" Coulson's words were just as full of conviction. A belief in SHIELD's ability to help. If she didn't know about the rot riddling the middle of the organisation Coulson's belief in it might actually make her a believer. As it was she would play the game and then get Mike out of there before he joined Violet in being disappeared.

A hand slipped into a pocket and Mike's drivers license was placed on the screen in front of Coulson.

"She had it on her the whole time." The words were whispered between the younger of the three new comers. A quelling glare from the other new comer shut the voice down.

Seconds after the plastic touches glass a stream of information spreads out across the screen.

"Mike Peterson, factory worker, married, one kid. Gets injured, gets laid off. Wife jumps ship. Good guy. Bad break." Coulson read off and summarised the information. 

As Coulson talks Skye pushed off the door and inched her way between Coulson, the known entity, and the older female agent, a complete unknown.

"Best guess is, somebody tells him they can make him strong again, make him super." He continues.

"Who has the tech to do that? And why would they want to?" The words were softly but powerfully spoken by the older female agent.

Coulson raises an eyebrow at Skye, inviting her to provide the information. When she stayed silent he turns to look at the other male in the room. "Fitz, what do we have from the security footage before the blast?" 

Skye made note of the name, it was the same one Coulson had talked to over the comms earlier. 

A few competent flicks of his fingers later, Fitz had a grainy black and white image playing beside Mike's life. The five of them watched as two men gestured angrily at each other, a pointed finger an obvious threat.

"What are we seeing?" 

"Well the man is angry at the other man." Fitz managed to get the words out without a single ounce of sarcasm or patronisation. Not something that many other people would be able to do. Even without the sarcasm three unimpressed looks were levelled at the young engineer.

"The data is very corrupt." The as yet unidentified younger female broke in. Come to think of it Coulson hadn't bothered to introduce anyone, Skye scowled to her self, how rude?

"Yeah like cold war Russia corrupt." Fitz took control of the conversation back.

"Yeah." A head nod was given to back up her words and the other man.

"I can't sync the timecode without..." The way the two dropped and picked up the thread of the conversation from each other was going to give Skye a headache. Completely ignoring that James and her had often had whole conversations with monosyllables. Not monosyllabic words, actual monosyllables and Violet had complained more than once that trying to parse their subtext gave her a migraine, a physiological impossibility.

"What if you had the audio?" If Skye didn't give something up this would take forever. "I was running surveillance on the lab. I had my mike pointed at the window before the blast. The digital file is in my van. My programs are probably still scrubbing it for background noise but you have more processing power."

During the course of cutting them off, she gained and then lost the attention of the two scientists as they had a completely silent back and forth. Obviously some decision is made because at the same time the both break back into audible communication.

"Um, that audio would be great. Thanks!"  
"Yes please. Thank you."

"Your van's here." Coulson re-entered the conversation.

"The encryptions coupled to the GPS. Get my van back to that alley and I'm in business." She lied through her teeth. She could, and had, coupled encryptions to location data but her own system was protected by Freya, but the best defence was one they didn't even know to look for or whatever. She turned and left the room without waiting for any sort of confirmation from the Suits.

"Agent May will escort you." Coulson called out at her retreating back. 

Skye wondered which one was May as they still hadn't bothered to do a round robin of names.

Coulson stopped May as she stepped towards the door. "On your way out wake up Ward."

A curt nod was his only answer.


	7. Episode 1 Part 6

**Skye's Van:**

The inside of Skye's van was as dark and warm as she had been able to make in the six months she had been setting this op up. Textiles in dark reds and rich purples blocked out any external light, the glow from her monitors giving her face a slightly sickly look. She could feel May hunched on the lumpy mattress behind her, glaring at her back coldly. If May thought that was going to be enough to crack her, she had another thing coming.

Skye dialled the number Fitz had given her as she left the plane. She wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and went back to typing. With a purely mental sigh as the uncomfortable arrangement she waited for the other end of the call to be picked up. She already missed the ease of hands-free comms and it had only been 12 hours since she had had to give them up. Oh well, she thought to herself, hopefully she would be back to proper comms units soon.

"Hallo, yes?" Fitz finally picked up the phone.

"Fitz it's me. Where should I send this file?" Skye finished getting through the typed security protocols to get into her system. Freya couldn't run the usual voice recognition software with May trying to glare a hole through her right shoulder. It took longer than it should have as the tension from the other woman was messing with her vibrations and it was throwing her off.

"Right, yes. There is a server you can send it to, the IP is 149.135.999.13" Fitz rattled off the numbers.

Skye loaded up a not completely legal software upload software, that was quicker than anything on the market, and got the transfer going. 

"Audio file should be coming through. It's not compressed so might take a minute."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm getting it." Fitz's voice crackle across the line, his distraction obvious. "So, uh, when - when you get back, I'll show you my thing.... A Thing, it's not …. It’s my hardware... My equipment... Lets... Hang up."

Halfway through his bumbling Freya started giggling in Skye's other ear. Pretending the engineer hadn't hung up on her she talked to her AI.

"Yeah I can get you getting it from my end. Gonna run protection from my end to make sure _noone_ else gets access to the conversation. Can't have anyone going off half cocked." Skye did her best to mumble the words into the phone, trying to keep May from realising there was anything wrong.

"You don't think James would want to know?"  Why the did she program sass into her AI? Oh, right she didn't, Freya learnt it all on her own.

"Need is a better word for it." Skye was seriously regretting the weekend that she and Violet had had to leave James and Freya alone over which she had picked up way to many of his bad habits when it came to trolling people.

"Maybe, but want is more interested." Freya's light voice dripped with laughter.

"Mmhmm." There was nothing Skye could say to that without giving the game away so she pretended to hang up from the call that had ended minutes ago. Freya's laughter following her.

 

**Laboratory, Command 606:**

Jemma couldn't believe the results the mass spectrometer was spewing out on the coppery-gold liquid she had collected from the charred bodies biotech enhancements. Amino acids she had never seen, and the machine was struggling to identify, three different elemental sources of gamma radiation, a tiny amount of theta-radiation, steroids, and other things that the mass spec was simply refusing to name. There were also biological sources that she was waiting on the DNA sequencing results to finish analysing. From the substances she had already she had a good idea of the aim of the liquid, bacterized Super Soldiers. But the combination of multiple radiation sources was inherently unstable and probably the source of the explosion.

"So the alien metal wasn't the explosive?" Coulson's voice came from right beside her, making her jump. Jemma wasn't sure when Coulson had arrived, but he was standing right behind her looking over her shoulder.

"Well, I assumed from the break pattern and dispersion that it was, but it's just dripping with gamma radiation." Jemma pushed her drill into the metal casing that held the ominously glowing liquid. "OH! Now it's actually dripping!" She caught the drop of liquid and smiled at her boss. "Fun!"

As she prised a piece of the metal off for further testing, Agent Ward banged into the room, his glower darkening the whole laboratory.

"So, what did that get us?" He growled at Coulson, looming into the older agent's personal space. The shit he had spilled was dangerous, especially to himself.

Fitz, completely ignoring the social ques of the situation, pushed between the two field agents and grinned at Ward, "Skye's sending us the rest of her decrypted files on centipede. But we have her audio. It should finishe loading any second." As he finished talking his computer beeped, signalling the end of the upload.

"Nice work." Coulson ignored the still glowering Ward and moves across the lab space to allow Fitz to present the findings. Ward hunched behind him with his arms crossed like a pouting four-year-old.

"Now, using motion estimation, Bayesian Inference, a beam splitter and a little diffraction theory..." Fitz trails off as he enters commands into the virtual reconstruction software. A few minutes later he continues the same train of thought. "Our mystery man appears."

On the 's' of appears, a holographic rendering of the pre-explosion black market laboratory appeared in the cargo hold, just outside the lab.

"It's like magic, but like scientific magic. Like science...." Fitz frowns and shakes his head at himself as Ward steps up to just out of arms reach of the slightly see through arguing holograms.

"Explosives in the case?" Ward was interested in spite of himself.

The recording starts, the man in the lab coat slowly backing up from the civilian.

"...please calm down. Just ...check... Vitals..." There was some static obscuring some of the words, but the intention and fear was clear.

"I ... Fine. I want to feel more. Where's the doctor? Where is she?" The anger coming of the recording was almost palpable. The audio becoming clearer as their voices rose in rage.

"If you don't settle down I'll have you sedated." It was a weak threat when the other man was twice the size and hoped up on every rage and strength inducing substance known to man.

The threat only served to anger the man further and he slammed a chair into the wall as he screamed "Where is she?" just as the hologram stutters to a holt.

"Wait," Fitz jumped forward into the middle of the frozen image. "did you- did you see that on his arm?" He looked around at the blank faces of the other two men and rewound the image to the point where the angry man first lifted up the chair. On the frame he wanted he pointed out the bio-tech attachment on the enraged man.

"What does that look like to you?" Coulson asked.

"A centipede." Ward answered the rhetorical question.

"It's an intravenous filter for his blood. The goo sir, it has alot of the original elements of Dr. Erskine's serum along with..." Jemma left her desk to join the three men.

"Super soldiers." Coulson cut her off.

Jemma nodded at Coulson's conclusion, she was so use to Fitz cutting into her sentences that she didn't even notice when someone else did it. "I'm reading alien metal, gamma radiation, the serum, every known source of super power thrown into a blender." She stepped up to join Fitz in the middle of the hologram, examining the frozen image. The other two were still keeping a step back, their ingrained threat assessment training not allowing them to get any closer. Not that either of them would want to.

"We need to see the origin of the blast. Run it back from the last point recorded." Coulson asked Fitz.

A nod from the engineer and a flick of his finger against the tablet he was holding had the hologram morphing into a different image. A large ball of flame and flying debris replacing the two arguing men in the open space. Frame by frame the fire retracts as the software recreates the origin of the blast. It was a slow process, Simmons having peeled off early to return to her own analysis, Ward had taken a seat half way up the spiral stair case, Coulson was tapping at his phone at Fitz's desk, while the engineer himself was roaming between the hologram and the two cars on the ramp, adjusting the software parameters as more information flooded onto his system from his own analytical tools and Skye's upload which had only just finished sending data. A ping signalled the end of the recreation, drawing the attention of the other three back to the cargo hold.

At a nod from Coulson, Fitz flicked through the first few frames, the fire and destruction starting under the skin of the angry man. Cracks appearing as red lines of fire on his skin. They watched horrified as his body gave into the internal stressors and exploded outward.

"Extremis." Coulson almost whispered, catching himself and continuing the sentence at a normal speaking volume. "It's new. Completely unstable."

"Poor man didn't bring the explosive. And Mike has the same stuff in his system." Simmon's sounded like she was holding back tears by the skin of her teeth.

"And judging by his strength level, a lot more." Ward had gathered himself in the seconds the other two had spoken, to now be able to speak without inflection.

"So, any minute now Mike is gonna..." Fitz mimed an explosion.

Simmons nodded at him and ran the calculation in her head. "He'll take out anyone within a two-block radius, sir." She looked at Coulson, hoping for an answer for the possible destruction that she was not going to get from him.

"Well, you wanted a bomb." Coulson verbally poked at Ward as he climbed the stairs, intent on updating May with the new information.


	8. Episode 1 Part 7

**Skye's Van**

Skye sat and quietly hummed to herself as she watched the upload bar tick through percentages. Freya was still chuckling in her ear and May hadn't let up on the frosty glare. With nothing else much to do she picked up her phone, and keeping the screen tilted away from her new Secret Agent Shadow, thumbed open a text to James.

>  hows it

She only hummed two off tune notes before a response flashed onto her screen.

>> All clear. In the diner if you need back up doll.

He always sent full, properly formatted sentences. A fact she lightly poked at him about in quiet moments, just as he poked her about her lack of formatting in texts. There were times she purposefully mangled the messages, just to see him growl about it later.

> so fr so gd

His next response wasn't as quick to arrive. The little 'typing' bubbles crawling across her screen for long seconds.

>> Why are you never able to use full sentences? If you have the time is it so hard?

She quickly shot through her own response with a grin.

> y

Her next message is cut off as her phone is thrown from her hand by the van being violently rocked by an impact from outside. May pushes off from where she had been hunched in the back of the vehicle. Lurching at a second impact she throws open the side door with one hand, her other reaching for her pistol. A dark arm reached through the door, grabbed handful of May's black uniform shirt and YANKED. She flew out the door and into the wall behind with a dull, sickening crack. Mike looked down at her still form for a long second, a blank expression on his face before turning to Skye.

"Mike? What are you doing? You were meant to wait." Skye gaped at him. She could feel the situation spiralling out of her control.

"You said you would help me. But your working with them! So your gonna disappear us." Mike crowded her into the corner of the van as he climbed in.

"Us?" Skye's voice quaked on the word. Mike was unravelling faster than she had thought, faster than the last guy who had _blown up!_

Mike reached back behind himself and pulled his son into the van, sliding the door shut behind them.

"Oh. Hi." Skye greeted the obviously scared boy. "It's gonna be alright. I'm gonna help your dad. Ok?" As she started to babble at them, she snaked her left hand behind herself and grabbed her phone from where it had fallen.

As Mike turned to comfort his son, she re-opened her messages and as quickly as she could sent one to James.

> Mk here Crzy. Follow.

She knew he was right next door and would be there to help if she needed. Having sent the message she mentally tuned back into the words Mike was saying.

"What are we?" The words were directed at his son.

"We're a team." The call and response obviously had meaning to the small family and served to level off the young boys emotions.

"That's right." Mike looked back at Skye as she tucked her phone into her pocket. "Now, drive."

"Right, right, Ok." She scrambled over the centre console and into the drivers seat. "Where am I going?" Turning the van over, she tapped Freya's implant to get her to relay the conversation to James.

"Train station." Mike growled before turning back to his son.

The glowing red cracks working up his neck did not assure Skye that he hadn't already lost it, but she had to work under the assumption that he hadn't, or at least that he would hold it together while Ace was around.

 

**Break-out Area, Command 606:**

Coulson joined Jemma in the planes small lounge area, leaving Ward to continued looking over the little intel they had. The younger agent swiping a finger over the tables touch screen to flick from an image of the Michael Peterson as he had looked when he started at the factory, to the paused recreation of the laboratory blast. His other hand resting on the rifle half assembled on the table Coulson had just left.

"Sir?" Jemma looked up from the file she had been reading as her boss joined her. "He didn't explode because he was angry. The two are connected." Her words had fallen from her mouth in a jumble, but now she took a breath to collect herself and choose her words more carefully. "Its, it's kind of a chemical surge? But, calming him down will by him a minute at most. He will detonate within the next few hours."  
"Solution?" Coulson needed her to give him something he could work with.

"Isolate him. Get him away from people?"

That wasn't what he wanted to hear. "Or?" He tried to push for something more, something to salvage the desperate single father who had only been trying to keep his family together.

"Put a bullet through his brain." Jemma winced when she answered him, known that it was even worse than her first suggestion. "If he's dead the irradiated metabolic process will stop." Her sad, kicked puppy face looked up at him in abject apology. Behind him, Ward snapping a piece of the rifle in place punctuated her words with a sickening finality. Obviously the other man had heard the scientist and was willing to take the step if ordered, Coulson wasn't sure if he could give that order. He had joined SHIELD to help and this seemed the complete opposite of helping. Especially as the first mission back from having given so much in the name of duty only a few short months ago.

He sent an almost pleading look at the young scientist, "We need to come up with a third option. One that doesn't involve Mike's son losing a father."

"We have a couple of hours at most. There is no way that we could possibly..."

"DON'T EVER TELL ME THERE'S NO WAY!" Coulson thundered over her. "Find me something!" His words chased her out of the room and back to the lab.

Coulson turned back to watch Ward finished re-assembling the large rifle, flicking his comm unit on.

"May?"

 _"He took Skye."_ May's voice crackled across the line.

"You alright?"

_"We'll deal with that later. At length."_

Coulson winced at her response. He could already imagine how _that_ conversation was going to go.

_"Right now we need to figure out where they went."_

"Ok, come back to base and we'll figure out our next step."

 

**Skye's Van:**

Skye eased her old van through the thick L.A. traffic. One eye on the road in front of her, the other on the sleek motorcycle and rider following a few car length's behind, and her vibrational awareness on the two bodies behind her. The waves of uncertainty and barely controlled fear flowed of the smaller of the two, while Mike glowed with Wrong in her mind. She could feel the violent interactions between his cells and the poison being pumped into his veins.

"Mike, what's the plan here?" Skye asked softly. Maybe if she got him talking she could figure out where she lost control of this.

"Get out. Get away. Fix this." He answer, while succinct, didn't give her much to go on.

"How though? Why didn't you trust that I would help?" Keep the conversation going, she thought to herself.

"Why _should_ I trust you? The last people I trusted turned on me. Why wouldn't you? Ten seconds after talking to me you hooked up with the men in black and disappeared. How do I know you won't disappear again? Or sell me out? Huh? How?" He was ranting and out of breath by the end.

Skye could feel his agitation grow and risked a look back at them. "I'm not gonna disappear Mike. I promise. I can  and will help." She tried to sooth his ruffled feathers as she pulled into a parking spot in front of Union Station and turned the van off.

She took a minute to breath and watch James pull his motorcycle up three parking spots behind her van. He slid off the powerful machine and nodded in her direction with a smirk, rightly guessing that she was watching him. A wry grin tilted one side of her mouth up before she pulled her attention back to the family behind her.

She twisted in her seat and addressed them, "What now?"

"Make us disappear." Mike waved at her computer set up.

Skye slid back into the body of the vehicle. "Ok." She woke her system back up. Without May breathing over her shoulder she was able to take the quicker unlock road of the voice recognition.

"Freya, Unlock system. Activation code Skye Barnes."

 _"ACTIVATE"_ Freya's voice echoed in the small space, slightly more mechanical than normal in deference to the presence of others.

All three screens lit up, the left screen started scrolling through the rolling encryptions that protected Skye's mobile systems, the right screen flicked through the social media and mainstream news articles that Freya thought Skye might want to know about, and the middle screen showing a blank command page, waiting for Skye to get to work. She pulled the keyboard towards herself and started inputting the commands that would start her identification programs, this time the wipe functions. For long minutes she worked, Mike growing more and more agitated the longer it took.

"How long's this going to take?" Mike finally cracked in the silence.

"This is top speed, trust me. It's not like I'm deleting a Facebook page. I'm bypassing the license bureau's A.E.S. protected data stream." She continued typing through her explanation. At the same time a message on her right screen, disguised in the scrolling social media feeds, told her James was just outside if she needed him.

Mike let her work in silence for another minute. "How do I know you can really do this?"

Deep breath Skye, she told herself before answering, "I've done it before." A few times she tacked on in her head.

A quiet knock rung through the space. Mike's neck almost cracked, it moved so fast to look at the door.

"Hey, hey. That's one of my friends. Not one of the men in black. He will help you get away. Just let him come in and we'll explain. We can still work the original plan." Skye drew his attention back to her.

He watched her for long seconds, trying to find the con that wasn't there. He eventually came to that conclusion and carefully nodded acceptance. With the hesitant head movement she stretched across the space and knocked back before returning to her work, the wipe was almost done.

The door slid open with a quick squeak of distressed metal. The and James wrapped around the door frame to pull himself in was the human hand, the other pushed the hair that had escaped his low ponytail out of his eyes. Blue eyes that swept over the interior of the van, assessing the occupants. Fully inside the vehicle he pulled the door shut and moved up beside Skye.

"What's the plan?" James addressed Skye, even as he was looking at Mike.

She ignored him for a few seconds until the wipe was complete. Then turned to look at the three men in her space.

"The wipe is done. You're gone." She talked to Mike first. "Ok, just hear me out."

 


	9. Episode 1 part 8

**Science and Technology Lab, Command 606:**

For only having two people in it, the Bus' small, gleaming lab was a hive of slightly manic activity. Simmons bent over a lab table adding a dark green, granular powder to a thick, clear liquid and watching as it thinned and turned bright, shining blue. She placed a sample onto a glass slide and examined it under a microscope. Across the room from her, Fitz cradled a wireless keyboard in one hand as he studied the large flat screen built into the back room as his simulations ran.

"Come on! Give me more paralysis." The words burst from the young engineer's mouth as the next simulation finished running. His fingers inputting new parameters as he continued to grumble about the results. The computer behind him gave a warning beep and threw the next set of results up. "Less rigor mortis! Oh, come on! No. No, no, no!" Fitz deleted the last set of instructions and typed new ones into the program, still chanting 'no' under his breath. He tried to glare the screen into compliance as he stabbed enter into the system.

The obvious distress and frustration in her best friend's voice finally brought Simmons out of her trance like movements. "Just pretend it's and exam. We're taking an exam."

Fitz blinked back at her for a few seconds as the idea settled into his brain, before giving a decisive nod. "An exam. Yeah."

"Yeah." Simmons nodded back at him and returns to her work, manipulating a dial on her equipment to bring the microscopic images she had been studying on to the screen next to her. Not allowing herself to fall quiet as far into her own work this time.

"Okay. Okay. I don't want an 'F'. 'F' equals massacre." Fitz mumbled mostly to himself as he began typing again.

For long minutes they silently continue working, before a long series of loud beeps issues a warning from the lab's main computer terminal. Both scientists abandoned their work to rush across the space and stand in front of the computer, a bright flashing "SECURITY BREACH" warning cutting the screen in two.

"Oh no!" Simmons gasped. "What is this nonsense? Why are you making nonsense?!"

Fitz didn't answer her right away, instead pulling up a command window and his fingers became blurs as he tried to combat the cyber incursion. "This isn't me! Someone's hacking our secure channel."

Both of them were so involved in stopping the attack that they missed Coulson entering the room behind them. For a second he stood silently, six feet into the lab. He studied the large screen on the wall, where numbers were steadily scrolling, showing the progress of the hack.

"It's longitude and latitude." He announces over the scientists continued bickering. At the words, Fitz and Simmons both jumped and spun to stare at the boss.

"Mike took Skye. She's telling us where. Fitz direct us in. Simmons find a way to neutralize him." He told them before leaving the room and join Ward in their dark SUV.

 

**Skye's Van:**

James riffling through the pockets on his cargo pants drew Skye's attention away from where she was monitoring the tracker she had dropped in SHIELD's van. Keeping one eye on her computers she turned to her husband and quirked a querying eyebrow. Finally finding what he was looking for, James held out two white pills to Mike.

"Doc said these should hold you over till we get you to her."

The other man cast a suspicious eye over the medication and the two adults taking up most of the space.

"Mike, we said we could help. This is part of that." Skye urged him to take the pills.

With a second glare at them both, Mike reached out and swiped the pills from James' hand. He inspected them closely and unable to find anything suspect, swallowed them dry with a grimace.

"Did she say how she was going with stabilising the serum?" Skye asked as she turned her attention back to her screens. She knew Betty was the best in her field but it was still a tall ask.

"Said she was as close as she could get without a blood sample. Natalia was able to send her Stark's extremis research." He smiled at her in re-assurance. He knew she cared more than he wanted her too. Too often it had led to her being hurt and that was something he always tried to avoid.

A ping from Skye's system drew the attention of the four people in the small space, cutting the conversation short.

"The team is on the move. When they are a few minutes out we move." Skye continued to track the team's progress. Once they were close she turn off her computers and turned back to the men silently glaring at each other behind her. "Let's go."

The four of them stumbled out of the van and took a second to allow their eyes to adjust. Skye and James exchanged a final glance before James slipped away from the others. He was quickly lost in the crowds streaming in and out of the train station. Mike took Ace's hand and roughly grabbed Skye by her upper arm, he began moving towards the doors. The tall man put on a good show of being unstable and furious as he had to continually jerk Skye's arm to keep her moving.

On his other side, Ace shook with fear, he understood that his dad was in trouble, it was hard for the young boy to remember that the anger rolling off his father wasn't real and that they would be ok. It was strange for the small family to trust other people to help them but Ace thought it might be good for his dad.

As they moved into the packed main hall, Skye started pushing at the hand crushing bruises into her arm and screaming. Her hysterical screams to be let go, echoed in the large space, quickly drawing a crowd of onlookers who drew back from the trio. Mike shook her, trying to get her to stop, and continued to move forward attempting to push through the crowd. With her continued cries rising above the slowly quieting crowd, Mike made the next move in their show, letting go of Ace, he swung an open hand into her face. The crack of flesh meeting flesh echoes in the now silent space. With their horrified eyes drinking in the drama, no one notices the small boy ducking between people towards the  platform doors. The first player was safely away.

Even as the last echoes of the slap faded from existence, a mighty roar rose from where James was standing in the second row of onlookers. He pushed between two 20 something hipsters and charged at the taller man, partially as they had planned and partially as his need to protect Skye triggered his training and it took over his conscious mind. With his subconscious hadn't been reminding him that this was all an act, he was able to pull part of his strength. His shoulder connected solidly with Mike's stomach. If Mike hadn't also been enhanced he would probably have come out of the contact with a couple of broken ribs, as it was it still pushed the air from his lungs and caused him to double over. He automatically released his grip on Skye to grab at James instead. A hand tangling in the shorter man's shirt and pulling him around and pushing him away giving them both a seconds breathing room to square off. Two helpful bystanders pulled the slightly dazed Skye away from the growing fight. The second player was as safe as she could be until the show was finished.

With a feral yell, the two men fell on each other. Both hitting harder then planned, Mike's strength influenced by the unstable serum coursing through his veins, while James' interrupted training at the hands of Hydra had taken over and pushed parts of his self back. Skye watched in horror as the plan began to fall apart. Mike should have disengaged and run by now. Coulson's team had to be on site by now and both men needed to be gone before SHIELD had a chance to subdue either of them. She pushed slightly away from where a grandmotherly looking woman in scrubs was trying to get a look at the bruising purpling across her cheek bone. Seconds before she tried to get their attention by starting to scream again, a group of men who had been working their way from the back on the crowd broke through and into the clear space around the brawling men. The five new comers piled on and pried the two men apart.

The intervention was enough to shake them both from their anger and with realisation of their loss of control, Mike turned and forced his way into the crowd as he should have done long minutes earlier. Hopefully, it would be enough to get away clean. James stood gasping for breath in the sudden calm. Two of the men who had broken up the fight still had a hand each on his shoulders, ready to hold him still if he tried to start swinging at anyone else. As he caught his breath he exchanged nods with the men around him, he was back in control and wasn't about to hurt anyone else. With calm slowly being restored, the edges of the crowd drifted away. The need to catch trains or get to work over riding any remaining drama. The train stations normal activity quickly resumed around her as Skye was pushed into a chair by the elderly nurse who had been looking at her face. Over the woman's shoulder Skye could see James drift back into the crowd just as Agents Coulson and Ward burst through the main doors. The two men garnered more an a few curious looks as people tried to figure out if their dramatic arrival had anything to do with the recently broken up fight. Their curiosity was rewarded seconds later as the older Suit caught sight of Skye begin fussed over and charged over two her.

"Skye, where is he?" Coulson demanded as he came to a halt in front of her.

"I.. I don't know." She allowed the slightest suggestion of a sob bubble up into her voice. The sound of distress brought the nurse's protective instinct to the fore and she rounded on the government agent.

"Can't you see she is hurt? Her attacker went that way." She waved a hand towards the tracks. "How about finding him, rather than interrogating the victim."  She continued to glare at him, standing between Skye and the agents until Coulson directed Ward to follow where she had indicated. Taking this as apparent compliance, the older woman turned back to Skye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to wrap this episode up and then an interlude that is half written.


	10. Episode 1 Part 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently I am the worst. I have had this written for weeks but got stupid busy with work (never try and do two full time jobs at the same time, it sucks) and haven't had a chance to type it up.
> 
> This was supposed to be the last chapter for this episode but I have decided to split it up into two so that I could get something out today. The last chapter should be out in the next week or so, I have half it written and know what is going to happen pretty well in the parts that I don't have written yet.
> 
> The plan is to a have a one-shot between each episode that deals with the history of this universe or where other characters are and what they are up to. The good news is I have the first one half way typed up and so it should be posted pretty quick after the last chapter.
> 
> I have decided to post each chapter as its own story for the moment. I might go back later and put it into one single story but not sure yet.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy.

L.A. Train Station:

Jemma hurried through the crowd of SHIELD Agents, LA PD officers, and crime scene techs. Slipping between a baby agent and a uniformed officer, she finally caught sight of her boss. Coulson was standing in front of Skye who was huddled on one of the station’s uncomfortable looking wooden benches, with a silver thermal blanket clutched around her shoulders. An older woman, who Jemma didn’t know, was sitting beside the hacker and tilting the younger woman’s chin towards the light, highlighting the dark bruise spreading across her cheek and temple. Coulson was speaking to the two women, causing the older woman to turn and glare at the Senior Agent. THE look on her face was enough to cause even Agent Coulson. Former handler of Strike Team Delta, one of SHIELD’s Top Five Badasses, five years running, into keeping his distance.

Coulson, standing with his hands clasped in front of himself, and a deceptively calm look on his face, also managed to glare right on back. AS Jemma got closer to the trio, an unmoving eye to the storm of swirling governmental efficiency, she was able to catch pieces of their conversation.

“I… I don’t know.” Skye stammered, as Jemma watched her sink further into her seat.

“Can’t you see she is hurt? Her attacker went that way.” The unknown woman burst in. “How about finding him, rather than interrogating the victim.”

“Ma’am, please. I need to question her.” Coulson tried to reason.

The woman was opening her mouth to respond when Jemma stopped next to them.

“Sir.” She cut in. “How about I give Skye a quick check over?” She threw Skye as comforting a smile as she was able. “With a second to calm down, I’m sure she will be able to answer your questions better.” This time she threw her brightest smile at Coulson and the other woman, a nurse judging by the card clipped to her pocket.

Coulson transferred his scowl from the nurse to the biochemist, before sighing in defeat. He needed Skye to co-operate and the best way for that to happen was probable for him to take a step back, he just didn’t appreciate a random civilian stand in his way. “Ok. Let me know when you are done.” Coulson turned sharply on his heel and went to find the head of the Police team. Maybe they had something for him.

Behind him, Jemma settled in on Skye’s other side. “Well Skye, lets have a look at you. Is this the only place you were hurt?” She waved at the visible bruise.

“No, he grabbed my arm also.” Skye let the thermal blanket fall away from one shoulder to bare her upper arm.

The exposed bicep was ringed with angry marks, Simmons and the nurse both wined in sympathy.

Simmons going further with a softly muttered ‘ouch’.

Skye looked down at the almost black impressions, obviously from a large tightly gripped hand. “It looks worse than it is. Only really hurts if I think about it.”

The nurse placed a hand on her shoulder in comfort. The older woman recognised the blank look on the young woman’s face, she had seen the same expressions on victims of abuse. This wasn’t the first time the woman net to her had been nocked around, not by a long shot.

Simmons offered a weak smile. “Well, regardless, we should get you back to base so that we can ice it. Better to try and stop any further swelling.” Simmons stood and turned to the nurse who stilled had a hand on Skye’s shoulder. “Thank you for looking out for Skye. I can get her more medical attention from here.” She offered a hand to help Skye up which was accepted.

Before the two young women moved away, the nurse stood up and lightly gripped Skye’s elbow. “If you need anything, please let me know.” She slipped her card into Skye’s hand that was still clutching the thermal blanket. She might not know who these federal people worked for, but she could see something wasn’t right with the situation she had stumbled into.

Both younger women nodded their thanks before continuing out of the building.

“Come on now, Agent Henrys has taken your van to base and Agent Ward is waiting for us outside.” The bioengineer continued to ramble good naturedly as they made their way outside and into on of SHIELD’s many _‘covert’_ SUVs.

Command 606:

Agent Ward pulled the large, black vehicle into the holding bay of the Bus. Once parked the two women scuttled out and into the lab on the same level while Ward walked down the ramp and back into the sunshine. A group of ground crew were huddled around one of the rear land gears and he needed to find out why.

Inside the glass walled lab, Jemma settled Skye into Fritz’s computer chair before bustling off again, gathering an ice pack and a blood collection kit. For half an hour she ran every test, scan, and motor function exam that she could think of before finally declaring Skye fit to be hustled further into the plane and settled in the lunge. Depositing Skye in the corner of the soft, cream sofa set that dominated the middle of the plane’s second level, the English woman brewed a pot of tea and pressed a warm mug into the hacker’s hands before taking a seat herself.

As they both finally settled the last three members of the team rattled onto the transport. Fitz was immediately ensconced in the lab without the two women catching sight of him, May nodded at them both, although the look Skye got was slightly cooler, before silently making her way to the cockpit. Agent Coulson took the seta across from Skye and rested his elbows on his knees, sighing deeply. “Skye, you need to tell us everything that happened between the diner and the train station. Did Mr. Peterson say anything about where they were going or what his intentions are?”

Skye silently shook her head, avoiding Coulson’s eyes. She was quickly coming to like most of this rag-tag team of SHIELD agents and she had never been good at lying to people she liked and even respected a tiny bit.

“Mr. Peterson is unstable. You saw the footage from the laboratory when the other subject finally lost control. That will happen to Mike, it’s a question of when not if. I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you can tell us anything that will prevent that from happening in a populated area you need to tell us.”

“He didn’t really say anything.” Skye twisted her inters further into the thermal blanket she was still clutching like a toddler clutched its blankie. She had a pat to play, and she would do it to keep everyone safe. “He got me to erase their online presence and then drive to the train station.” She allowed a hitch to break the end of her sentence, Jemma placed a comforting hand on her shoulder in response, selling the distress.

“Ok, are you up for looking online for any trace of them?” Coulson asked.

“No, I’m ok. I still want to help Mike. What’s happening isn’t his fault.” Standing up, Skye finally dropped the metallic fabric from around her shoulders and started towards the stairs. She had seen her van beside the loading ramp when they got back earlier.

“Skye, wait.” Coulson stopped her. “Use the computers in the Command Centre, it should save you some time and I won’t have to explain you hacking anything to my boss.” He smiled gently at her, he knew it had been a rough day for the young woman and it wasn’t going to get any easier any time soon.

Skye redirected her steps into the glass enclosed command centre, taking up a position behind the touch table, facing the wall of screens. Within seconds she had pulled up social media feeds, news websites, and command windows to begin setting up keyword searches and hacking into the local PD and FBI for any unusual activity reports. She didn’t bother with SHIELD, both because she figured she was already inside their system and because she knew that what was coming in over social media and the news would ping her searches faster than some level 1 lacky updating their databases.

Even as the though ran through her mind, a red breaking news banner began running across the bottom of the news broadcast and twitter’s trending hashtag abruptly changes from _#tinydogs_ to _#megaexplosion._

“Agent Coulson, Sir.” She called out.

The sound of two quickly moving pairs of feet, rather than a verbal response, answered her call. Coulson and Simmons quickly moved up to stand on their side of her. One seeing the flashing news broadcast of a large cloud of dust and ash billowing from somewhere in southern LA Coulson called the rest of the team in.

“There was an explosion just outside the city.” Skye looked at Coulson as she talked, he was the power in the room and any next step instructions would come from him.

“You think it was Mr Peterson.” Coulson replied as Fitz, May and Ward entered the rom. It definitely wasn’t a question, but she responded as if it was.

“Yes. It was a few miles from the station, probably trying to get them out of town.” Skye bit her lip before continuing. “What about Ace?”

“A team will check it out and try to find out.” Coulson looked back at her, compassion shining through his eyes. Even the thought of a child being hurt in this clusterfuck of what should have been a milk run, first mission was enough to crack even his cold Agent mask. “If he’s alive we will find him.”

Skye nodded and went back to filtering the reports that were beginning to flood in. Phil looked at her for another long moment before signalling for the rest of the team to get back to what they had been doing. Until the onsite team reported in there was nothing for them to do. Coulson, himself went up to his office to being co-ordinating the response.


	11. Episode 1 Part 10

Two hours Later:

The team had scattered to their respective work areas, Fitz and Simmons returning to the lab to continue pouring over the centipede serum, Ward had set up a punching bag in the cargo hold, May had locked herself back into the cockpit, Skye was still in the command centre, muttering to herself about 64-bit encryption strings and substitution cyphers. Finally, Coulson was still in his office going over the reports from the away teams as they were filed. He was half way through typing up his own notes from the Train Station when his phone desk rung.

“Coulson.” He pulled a pad and pen closer, ready to take notes as needed.

“Sir,” Agent Petrov, the leader of the away team swung right into his report. Never one to mince words, even for a SHIELD agent. “We have finished processing the site. The chemical signature matches those sent to us by Doctor Simmons from the lab explosion. Unfortunately, we also found fragments from a child’s backpack that matches the description your team provided.” The words crackled and spit over the encrypted line.

The sigh Coulson released in response was deep and heartfelt. He knew that Mike had had not chance of surviving after he left the Train Station, but he had hoped his son would live.

“Thank you, Agent Petrov. Please forward all information to my office.”

“Yes Sir, you will have our report by the end of day.” The reply was prompt.

They both hung up the call. Coulson staring at the handset in its cradle for a long time. Putting off the moment when he would have to go and tell the young woman down stairs that her friend and his child were dead. How did you explain to someone who still looked at the world with such hope that you had failed at stopping the people they cared about from being hurt? He put it off for a further few minutes by shuffling papers around his desk. It used to be so easy, before he died, he would take a breath, slip the cold _Senior SHIELD Agent_ mask on and emotionlessly tell people that their loved one wasn’t coming back. Now, he was tired. He was tired of being the person that delivered bad news. He was tired of their _being_ bad news to deliver.

With a final sigh he stood and walked over to his office door. Before opening it, he straightened his tie and re-buttoned his jacket. Willing some of that old detachment to return, he left the quiet sanctuary of his office and went down the stairs to find Skye still in the command centre.

“Skye. With me.” Coulson waved for her to follow him.

He lead her down and out onto the sun drenched tarmac of the airport.

“Coulson?” Skye had quietly followed him out and away from the plane because she could tell that something was wrong, and he obviously wanted a private word. But she was unsure about why they weren’t going to his office to talk.

He didn’t say anything as he continued to walk, finally reaching a short cement wall that ran along the side of a hanger. He lent against the sold barrier, turning his face up to the hot Southern Californian sun before speaking.

“I just heard back from the team I sent to the site of the explosion.” He turned to look at her with sad eyes.

“It’s not good news is it?” Skye knew what the answer would be, she had been the one to suggest it, but the hurt that Coulson felt on her behalf was effecting her more than she thought it would.

“I’m so sorry. It was Mr. Peterson and it appears that Ace was on site and did not survive the blast.” He turned his head and surveyed the runway, before rubbing a hand down his face. “I know it’s not the outcome we wanted. But as much as we try, we can’t save everyone.”

“We can try.” She crossed her arms across her chest, protectively.

“We can. You handled yourself well over the last twenty-four hours. I would like to offer you a position on my team. You could do some real good with your skills Skye.  Maybe help shut down the people that hurt your friend.”

He watched her as she processed the offer.

For long, silent minutes Skye watched him back. “Hitching a ride on the crazy plane? I’m not exactly a team player.” She raised an eyebrow at him in challenge. Interested in hearing his counterpoint.

“We’re not exactly a team.” He answered with a sad smirk. “But we’re in a position to do some good. And you’d be front row centre to the strangest show on Earth, which is, after all, what you wanted.” His smirk grew into more of a kind smile.

Skye smiled back at him, “I was able to hack SHIELD from my _van._ You’re gonna show me something new?”

Before he could answer Ward stuck his head out of the rear of the plane.

“Sir.” Ward shouted at them. “We have an 084.”

“Is that confirmed?” Coulson shouted back.

“We’re to confirm. We have flight clearance and a window to lift off in 5.” The younger agent disappeared back into their transport.

“You’ve got exactly five minutes to decide if you really wanna know.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any suggestions on tags please let me know.


End file.
